Manning Marable

The vast majority of African Americans
who vote in the November 2000 presidential election will undoubtedly support
the democratic ticket of Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman. The national black
political establishment including more than ten thousand elected officials,
the Congressional Black Caucus, key black leaders of the AFL-CIO, and paid operatives
within the Democratic National Committee — have for months spoken with one
voice, unanimously praising Al Gore.

The Black establishment’s
behaviour and motivations are understandable. Big city mayors rely on federal
dollars to address urban problems, and a Gore administration would certainly
be preferable to the conservative policies of Bush. A strong black voter turnout
for Gore could also contribute to Democratic majorities in Congress, which in
turn would elevate a number of African Americans like Harlem Congressman
Charles Rangel into powerful House chairmanships. Thousands of black
professionals, managers and attorneys who are connected to the Clinton
administration through networks of patronage and power, see Gore’s victory as
being essential to their own career advancement. Any private misgivings they
still feel about Gore’s embrace of the death penalty, or the anti-affirmative
action positions of Joe Lieberman, are now effectively suppressed. Like loyal
foot soldiers in a grand army on the battlefield, they are ready to hurl
themselves against the ramparts of their political enemies.

Yet blind loyalty is rarely
rewarded, whether on the battlefield or in politics. Those who declare their
allegiances first rarely sit at the table when the spoils of victory are
divided. Those who make up their minds last exercise the greatest power in
politics, because they can leverage all parties into making valuable
concessions. This is the strategic explanation why Gore and Bush are spending
millions of dollars and the majority of their campaign efforts to appeal to
so-called ‘‘swing voters’’, especially senior citizens and suburban middle
class white women. Bush completely ignores the African-American electorate
because he knows he’ll receive few black votes, probably under 10 percent.
Gore can also safely ignore us, because he knows we have nowhere else to go.
Many black elected officials are only working just hard enough to have a
decent black voter turnout, but privately don’t want the overwhelming masses
to go to the polls. If millions of poor, unemployed and working class
African-Americans were actually mobilized to participate in the electoral
process, the outcome would be entirely unpredictable. Thus all too many black
elected politicians and Democratic Party officials have become silent
partners in the suppression of black electoral political power.

Since Bush represents no
alternatives, the real debate that ought to exist within the African-American
community is whether we should vote for Gore or Green Party presidential
candidate Ralph Nader. Black mainstream Democrats, most trade union
organizers and many progressives are now resorting to a wide variety of
explanations why black folk must remain doggedly loyal to Gore and the
Democrats. Briefly, let’s examine three of their main arguments.

Argument One : ‘‘Gore’s a positive good, not a necessary
evil.’’ This position strains credibility, even among members of the
Congressional Black Caucus like Representatives Maxine Waters and Jesse
Jackson, Jr. Gore has a long track record of hostility to black people’s
interests, especially on issues related to criminal justice and poor women’s
rights. It was Gore who pushed for the passage of the 1994 Crime Act, that
broadly expanded the federal death penalty. It was Gore earlier this year who
promised to cover America in ‘a blanket of blue’’ with the hiring of 50,000
more police nationwide. It was Gore, according to journalist Alexander
Cockburn, who ‘‘has pushed for block grants for prison expansion in the
states, with the proviso that such federal grants will be issued only if each
state insures that prisoners serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.’’
It was Gore as a Congressman who voted to ban federal funding of abortions
for poor women, even in cases of rape. It was Gore who finally convinced
Clinton to sign the destructive 1996 Welfare Act. It was Gore who almost
single-handedly pushed Clinton’s administration to the right, by hiring
Reagan stooge David Gergen and sleazy political consultant Dick Morris.

Argument Two : ‘‘Gore’s not great, but he’s all we’ve to
defeat the Far Right.’’ This argument does make sense, but only because Bush
and Company represent repressive politics and policies that are both ‘‘bad’’
and ‘‘ugly’’. Liberal journalist Tom Wicker has recently posed a critical
question in the Nation that must be answered seriously, even by Nader’s
supporters : ‘‘Whom do you want to nominate Justices for the Supreme Court in
the next four years?’’ The next president will probably nominate three new justices
to the Supreme Court. As Wicker suggests, ‘‘three more Scalia &
Thomas-style votes

would transform what’s now a
back-and-forth Court into a (conservative) bastion that could last for
generations.’’ Row v. Wade would probably be reversed, and the remnants of
affirmative action destroyed forever. Gun control and campaign finance reform
would be possible. Wicker concludes that the best guarantee against any such
outcomes is a big Democratic victory across the board in November. Wicker,
the well-meaning white liberal, is wrong here. The best way to defeat the
Right is to build powerful democratic movements within black and brown
communities, within labour, gay and lesbian, women’s rights and environmental
constituencies. Tactically, the black freedom movement and the progressive
left should mobilize to defeat the Republican Right, especially in those
local, state and national races where there is a clear and unambiguous
distinction between the agendas of the candidates. One prominent example that
immediately comes to mind is that of conservative Republican ‘‘Little
Rickie’’ Lazio, the baby-faced reactionary masquerading as a moderate, who is
challenging Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Senate in New York.

Argument Three : ‘‘Nader’s no
real alternative, and actually could be worse than Gore.’’ In recent weeks,
Nader has become the object of considerable attack from various feminist,
gay/lesbian and minority constituencies. Patricia Ireland, president of the
National Organization of Women, denounced Nader as ‘‘ill-informed about
abortion rights, and accusing him of ‘‘ignorance’’ and ‘‘indifference’’ on
women’s issues. A San Francisco-based minority coalition of African
Americans, Latinos and Asians described Nader as being ‘‘oblivious’’ to
people of colour and women. David Smith, the spokesperson for the Human
Rights Campaign, the country’s largest lesbian, gay and transgender rights
group has dismissed Nader as homophobic and heterosexist.

One can, and should seriously
question Nader’s views about racially oppressed groups, lesbians, gays and
women. We must set that same high standard in judging any candidate. Yet what
is also true isthat most of Nader’s
liberal-left critics are privately in Gore’s back pocket. The Human Rights
Campaign, for example, endorsed Gore and is campaigning vigorously on his
behalf. How and when did Al Gore become a fighter for black liberation? By
what ‘‘magic’’ did Gore transform himself as a defender of gay and lesbian
rights? What I find particularly offensive is the cynical manipulation of
racial and gendered attacks against the Nader campaign, while saying
virtually nothing about the devastating political hit poor and working class
women of colour have taken from the Clinton-Gore administration after the
implemention of welfare reform.

In the 2000 election, our
overall objective should not be to elect Democrats per se, but to mobilize
working class and the poor, to enhance African-American and Latino political
clout, and to defeat the Far Right. Voting for Nader in most states actually
accomplishes these goals better than by supporting Gore-Lieberman. In the
long run, we cannot rely on the Democratic Party to defend the people’s
interests, against the right. Only an independent, progressive people’s
movement challenging racism and corporate power can accomplish this.

The chief argument against
voting for Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader fromblack Democrats, organized labour, white
liberals and even Marxists, is that he cannot possibly win, and that he could
‘‘give’’ the White House to Bush. For example, former UnitedAuto Workers President Doug Fraser helped
to block a UAW endorsement of Nader by declaring that ‘‘every vote Nader gets
is a vote he takes away from Al Gore, not George Bush.’’

Jesse Jackson, Jr., possibly the
most intelligent and consistently progressive Congressman, makes the same
point. After flirting with public opposition to the selection of Lieberman as
Gore’s vice presidential running mate at the Democratic National Convention
in Los Angeles this summer, he pushed back from the political brink.
Whiteliberals, Jackson warned, may
have the ‘‘luxury’’ of voting for Nader, a courageous and principled man who
nevertheless cannot win, because they don’t have to live with the practical
consequences of a Bush victory.

Until several weeks ago,
Nader’s general approach was not to take this question seriously. In fact, he
frequently has derided Gore as a ‘‘coward’’, and described the White House as
‘‘a corporate prison.’’ A more effective and persuasive position would have
been to say that on many public policy positions, expecially on civil rights,
women’s and reproductive rights, on the Supreme Court and most labour issues,
Gore is clearly superior to Bush. But on a number of other crucial issues,
such as the immoral embargo against Cuba, military spending, trade and
globalization, civil liberties, ending the mass incarceration of over a
million African Americans and the vast expansion of the prison industrial
complex, Gore is at least as bad as Bush.